After paying a record price for a Chicago hotel in 2011, Sam Zell is poised to break that record with the sale of the same property, the Waldorf Astoria in the Gold Coast.

With five-star hotels fetching lofty prices, the billionaire investor has decided to cash out of the 188-room property at 11 E. Walton St., owned by a Zell fund. He has hired JLL the sell the hotel, among the most expensive in the city, which will go up for sale in the next few months, according to people familiar with his plans.The Zell fund bought the hotel in November 2011, when it was called the Elysian, for $95 million, or $505,000 per room, a record per-room price for Chicago. Though it's unclear how much the property will fetch this time around, it almost certainly will sell for much more than that today, given how much hotel values have jumped the past three years.Trophy hotels like the Waldorf have attracted a lot of interest from foreign investors, especially those from China, which are more concerned with preserving their wealth than generating a high return. Anbang Insurance Group of China paid $1.95 billion, or $1.4 million per room, for the Waldorf Astoria in New York. And this month, Greenwich, Conn.-based Starwood Capital Group agreed to sell the luxury Baccarat Hotel in New York to Sunshine Insurance Group of China for $230 million, or $2 million per room, a U.S. record.

“A foreign investor looking for a secure place to put their money is a likely candidate” to buy the Chicago Waldorf, said Ben Thypin, director of market analysis at Real Capital Analytics, a New York-based research firm.

Ben Carlos Thypin

I am currently the co-founder of Quantierra, the world's first data driven real estate brokerage and investment manager. In my former life as Director of Market Analysis at Real Capital Analytics, I worked with press outlets large and small to provide them with great data and insightful commentary. Here are some of the results of this collaboration. For the rest, please check out the News Archive.